Specified complexity, impossibly long threads, and LaTeX
… in the definition of Phi_S(T), the function Phi’(.) is applied both to T, which is a member of Omega, and to U, which is a member of Patterns(Omega). Even if patterns Omega is a well-defined set - which is far from certain - Phi’(.)…
Our server here is rather limited, and though I’ve been working on possible ways to make it a bit easier to write extensive math posts here, I haven’t met with much success. Many of you have been writing long and involved posts; but they symbols make them almost impossible to read, and the long threads, incorporating broad topics, make it difficult to follow a train of reasoning. So we’ve decided to expand, and hold our discussions of specified complexity at a new website with a bit more functionality.
This is not seperate from Evolution and Design, and the feeds for both comments and posts will be in the sidebar here (look under links). But this should help in two ways: 1)enabling clearer writing through the use of LaTeX and 2) encouraging more focused threads, by virtue of freer posting policies.
So– please visit the website and register. The way it will work: If you’ve contributed with more than seven substantive posts on the two threads discussing specified complexity here, and don’t have any strikes against you in that time period, you will automatically (i.e., as soon as we notice you’ve registered) be promoted to a writer, with the ability to make front-page posts. Class members also have posting priviliges, and everyone is welcome to comment. Feel free to repost recent comments from this thread if you feel it’ll help in the transition.
The ground rules do still apply, and if anything will be more strictly enforced there– but you can’t go far wrong when you’re talking about math, or?
You can write in LaTeX, or at least a minimalistic version thereof, by surrounding your equations with [tex] and [/tex]– an example would be tex] x^2 + y^2[/tex]. This should work both in the comments fields or if you’re writing a post. It doesn’t come out as beautifully as would be nice, but… significantly better than chi=-log_2[ M*N*phi(s)(T)* P(T|H)].
A syntax reference for the particular cgi we’re using is here, which tells you what you can and cannot do. You can play with fontsizes, but there isn’t much else besides math you can write.
We don’t have comment preview, but, instead, you’re allowed to edit your comment directly after you’ve posted it. There will be an “edit this” link next to your new comment for the first five minutes after it has been submitted, to give you a chance to fix syntax.
I know the course is almost over and I don’t know how many people will want to argue afterwards, but I figured it might be useful even for just a week– and, besides, I wanted the practice setting something like that up. :). It is probably rather buggy– mostly done over the past few nights, when I ought to have been asleep — but improvements will be made this weekend. So please email me with any and every complaint, as well as suggestions for making it work better.
Besides, where better to discuss specified complexity than in a thread title “Specified Complexity”?
On a website called “Specified Complexity”, maybe?
As a side note, the new host is virtually untested, so feedback about how fast/slow/nonexsistent it is would also be very useful.
Comment by Hannah — July 27, 2006 @ 4:36 pm
I registered, but have not received a password.
Salvador
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova, IDEA GMU — July 27, 2006 @ 9:30 pm
I received the password and will be posting eventually. I’m slower in my replies so as to give my posts more consideration on the math issues. So that’s why I’ve not yet posted.
The other side has raised some thoughtful considerations, but occasionally we’re still talking past each other.
I hope discussion of the math issues will continue on your new weblog, and I sense you want to get the story straight on various matters. I’m sorry the class is ending so abruptly as I think I’m close to cleaning up some of the sticky issues.
As far as feedback, if you feel the other side has made a good point that raises your concern about anything I said or Bill said, feel free to air that concern. Skepticism is healthy. :=)
Thank you for setting up a forum for us to clean all this up. Though I feel I have a decent handle on Dembski’s books, his latest paper threw a real curve as I had not read it until the class began. I erred in presuming that there was not at least one new radical conception, namely Phi_S(T). This is an exciting extension of his earlier work, but unlike his 1998 book, it has not had years to receive a working over.
I’ve not had a chance to dialogue with Bill and ask, “is that what you meant?” He needs our feedback, because it’s helpful to him to know how even ID-sympathetic readers might misread his latest paper.
My sincere thanks for setting this up. I look forward to arguing the case before fierce (but fair) criticism.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova, IDEA GMU — July 28, 2006 @ 11:45 am
Sal: I’ve not had a chance to dialogue with Bill and ask, “is that what you meant?” He needs our feedback, because it’s helpful to him to know how even ID-sympathetic readers might misread his latest paper.
While you are talking to Bill, could you ask him how he intends to calculate the CSI in the bacterial flagella, using his latest variant on how to calculate CSI? Are there any non trivial examples where CSI has been calculated?
Or are coins the extent to which ID is applicable, much like the age old creationist claim that evolution is too improbable to have happened by chance?
It also does not help, that Dembski refers to chance as processes of pure chance, pure regularities and any combination thereof. Seems that a lot of IDers have misinterpreted chance to mean that it is sufficient to show that a pure chance hypothesis is unlikely.
So Sal, how many of the objections to CSI raised on ISCID have been addressed by Dembski’s latest attempt?
For instance, Rex Kerr argued on ISCID the question Does anything at all exhibit specified complexity?
Others have argued much of the same such as Re: Design as a scientific explanation Post of the Month: September 1998 by Ivar Ylvisaker
Micah Sparacio in ‘Cataloguing Criticisms of Specified Complexity” collected various objections and criticisms of CSI, as well as ways to resolve them.
For instance Erik
Rex Kerr provided a way to solve a problem in the thread ” Refining the Generic Chance Elimination Argument”.
Rex also added some specific criticisms such as
Or Gedanken with a major one namely the inherent unreliability of the explanatory filter.
In the ISCID thread ” Responses to Criticisms of Specified Complexity” people explore how these criticisms can be addressed.
Also, given the contributions of these people, should the latest paper on specifications by Dembski give some references and credit to these contributions?
Either Dembski addressed these criticisms, collected by Micah, or he ignored them?
Comment by PvM — July 29, 2006 @ 5:23 pm
I have started postin at Specified Complexity
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova, IDEA GMU — July 30, 2006 @ 6:29 am
And I responded:
Sal
You are making claims about Dembski which do not follow for his mathematics.
Based on flawed claims, Sal asserts that Darwinian evolution is self-contradictory.
To claim that a simple H is adequate may make life simpler for IDers who have come to realize that the hard work to calculate H for non trivial hypotheses can be ‘avoided’ by making unsupported claims about sufficiency of simple H, but it also shows why ID remains scientifically vacuous.
That Bill’s paper may be confusing to some however should not be a reason to oversimplify its claims and arguments.
So Sal, let me ask to either support your claims, or one may have to come to the conclusion that your understanding of Dembski’s arguments is severely flawed.
Claims that could benefit from at least some evidence, logic. reasoning or mathematical support
1.Furthermore, a simple H (like uniform probability) that is not biased toward the appearance of CSI is an adequate H because any H that is extremely biased toward making an appearance of CSI is by definition an invalid H to define CSI
2. Thus if Darwinian evolution is at it’s root a claim that stochastic processes are the explanations for the creation specified patterns, the theory has demonstrated itself to be completely self contradictory.
2. seems to be a total strawman, a proof by assertion contradicted by much of anything we known about evolutionary theory, and its mechanisms. In fact, as Dembski has accepted himself, evolutionary algorithms can create the impression of CSI. And since Dembski has failed to present any way to resolve this matter, the existence of apparent versus actual CSI, ‘complicates’ the ID claims ’slightly’. Or more bluntly, it leaves ID powerless to make the claims made by for instance Sal.
Sal is thus correct “The issue is not so much what we don’t know, as much as the fact we know what a stochastic process should and should not do.” and based on what we do know, we also know that a stochastic process (processes which include regularity and chance) can in fact ‘create’ specified patterns.
Finally, Sal uses the term specific patterns, which to some may give the impression that the term has any relevance to the concept of ’specified’. We should be careful that we do not conflate the two concepts. Especially since evolutionary theory is not about specific patterna but specified patterns, where specification merely means function.
Dembksi himself suggested that function in biology is sufficient for specification.
Hope this clarifies why I encourage our friend Sal to attempt to rectify his mistakes or support them with some evidence.
Comment by PvM — July 30, 2006 @ 7:18 am
Sal: Furthermore, a simple H (like uniform probability) that is not biased toward the appearance of CSI is an adequate H because any H that is extremely biased toward making an appearance of CSI is by definition an invalid H to define CSI
Did Sal just claim that CSI is a meaningless concept which is self contradictory?
Dembski may have much rewriting to do to avoid these confusions :-)
Comment by PvM — July 30, 2006 @ 7:18 am
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Comment by elena — April 3, 2008 @ 3:57 pm